In Brief: Coddled Kids Become Depressed, Anti-Social College Students
Young people need independent play in order to become capable adults.
The narcissism and unruly protests of today’s college students have been recent topics for us. But why are the kids not alright? What happened along the way? Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free-Range Kids movement, has some answers.
She starts with reports that college students “are so lonely, sad, and socially anxious that they grab their dining hall food to go — preferring to eat in their rooms.” They’re attending sports events less frequently, and they’re reducing participation in class and completing assignments.
It’s no surprise that mental health on campus is reportedly decreasing. One in seven students has considered suicide this past year, according to a Healthy Minds study cited by the [Wall Street] Journal. In fact, so many students are demanding therapy that hundreds of colleges have contracted with a telehealth company that promises to find students a therapist within five minutes of their call.
Experts are debating the cause of all this misery, and there are plenty of potential culprits: COVID-19 closures, political extremism, and even the advent of the “like” button. But could one unnoticed factor be the fact that this generation spent so little time unsupervised as kids?
A recent University of Michigan study found that the majority of parents of kids ages 9 to 11 will not let them walk to a friend’s house, play at the park with a friend, or trick-or-treat unchaperoned. Only half will let their kids go to another aisle at the store by themselves.
It’s easy to see how a generation that was never allowed to play, walk around the neighborhood, or even drift over to the dairy section without anxious adults watching and assisting them…might just be unprepared for the real world — or even eating in the dining hall.
She continues and concludes with a solution:
When kids play unsupervised with other kids of different ages they learn important skills: creativity, communication, compromise, compassion, and leadership. When they successfully complete tasks on their own, they understand that they are helpful, capable, and resourceful.
When young people lose out on those experiences as kids, they become socially awkward and afraid as adults.
Until we give kids back some independence to run around, play, explore, and expand, they will arrive on campus unprepared — clinging to the rope like a toddler, because that’s how they have been treated all their lives.
